


Death is Not an Excuse for Being Late to Work

by BlackRook



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:44:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackRook/pseuds/BlackRook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone suspected Phil Coulson was nearby, and one time they were sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death is Not an Excuse for Being Late to Work

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Momentary Grace for the beta-reading!
> 
> The title is a loose quote from Max Frei.

**1\. (Clint)**

The night after the battle, Barton and Natasha came back to the Hellicarrier  - partly to be debriefed, partly to play liaison between SHIELD and the others. After Phase Two and the nuke, not one of the other four felt like trusting anyone with Loki and the Tesseract, as well as their own futures.

 Strangely enough, Fury was completely on their side, still pissed off at the World Council; so the meeting was brief and successful. Its ending meant all immediate concerns were solved, and the last remnants of adrenaline vanished – and everything finally completely caught up with Clint.  The list he glimpsed on one of the monitors on his way out played its part, too – not that anybody specifically wanted Clint to see it, just… it was there and it was enough. Fifty-five confirmed dead on that base in New Mexico, thirty-one MIA. Sixty-three confirmed dead on the carrier, sixteen MIA. Sixty-three, Phil among them, and Natasha could have been… He didn’t try to catch the number on the wounded, just dove into the nearest bathroom to have a nice little breakdown. Okay, not so nice and not so little.

 He left hot water running, to steam the mirror so he wouldn’t have to see his reflection. Damn. Memories  - of actions, thoughts and feelings – were jumbled, but burning. Burning aftertaste of being – serving as – a weapon, an arrow. He knew – logically – that ‘it wasn’t his fault’, but… Fuck. Double fuck with icing. Damn, English wasn’t strong enough… Clint was looking for something appropriate from Natasha’s vocabulary, when he felt a slap on the head from nowhere. He lifted his head abruptly – the mirror was still steamed, but there was a reflection there. And not his own.

 “Get your shit together, Agent,” familiar voice said. “You have a job to do.”

 “Yes, sir.”

 

**2\. (Fury)**

 Main SHIELD HQ in New York was – of course – damaged in the battle, so now Fury and Agent Sitwell were seating in one of the offices of hastily converted back-up building in Bronx. The desk between them was buried under papers – various deal-with-the-press plans from PR department. The plans varied from useless to disastrous, and Coulson wasn’t there to form a genius combination from them.

 Fury looked up. “Damn you…” And then an old ceiling fan suddenly turned itself on, made several turns, scattering the papers, and quieted back. Sitwell cursed the electricians and reached for the phone to curse them in person, but Fury stared at one sheet of paper, which suddenly took position at the centre of the desk. It had the picture of Pepper Potts on it.  But of course.

 “Sitwell, stop harassing the staff and get me Stark’s CEO on the line,” he said, adding silently ‘Thanks, buddy.’

 Pepper Potts agreed to orchestrate Chitauri-related press-releases – ‘just this once, in Phil’s name’.  Stark - ‘just this once, in Phil’s name’ – followed the lines, and all in all the result was satisfactory. And Fury hoped that by the time the Avengers would be in spotlight again – and there would be a next time – they would have someone trained.

 

**3\. (Natasha)**

 Once the battle was over, Natasha began watching Clint like his namesake – she was the only one who could possibly understand what he was going through. At least alien magic, unlike good old brainwashing with drugs and hypnotics, was all-or-nothing deal, Thor has confirmed that. It was fast and unstoppable, but once gone, it was gone – no physiological aftereffects, no triggers or back doors left, especially with the scepter dismantled and the Tesseract back in Asgard. But that still left memories, flashbacks, guilt, and other symptoms of post-Loki stress disorder, and Natasha watched closely, ready to give Clint a hug or a slap on the head, whichever he needed more at the moment.

 Clint was better than she thought he’d be, though, as if someone had already delivered that slap. After the Asgardians had left, Clint marched to Fury and informed him that the remnants of Loki’s recruits should be dealt with, and dealt by him. Fury stared at them (because of course Natash stayed close) and nodded, approving the mission.

 Normally, Barton wouldn’t be anywhere near the field after being compromised like that, but the situation still was far from normal, and Fury decided to trust Natasha’s judgment over the shrink's.  “The second you think he is not cutting it, bring him back,” he said, but things ran smoothly.

 Smoothly enough that when they found themselves having a three day layover in Iraq, Natasha left Clint to his waiting and went for a little Avengers-related mission on the side. Nothing exciting, just spreading some (mis)information concerning whereabouts of one Dr. Banner. Hulk’s reappearance during the battle was bound to renew attention on him from some very unpleasant people, and it was better for everyone involved if they didn’t look for him in Stark Tower.

 She was done in a day and a half, and was removing her tracks from the tiny room in a half-ruined building when passing the window she heard a familiar brisk voice in her left ear:

“A person of interest down to the right.”

 She looked in the direction, recognized a man who by all means should have been cooling his heels in CIA prison, and started following him, before she realized two things: first, she wasn’t wearing any comm equipment; second, the owner of that voice had been dead for more than a month. She swallowed harshly. Okay, mission first, spiritual talks later.

 By the time she had to return to Clint, she’d managed to get a lot of interesting information. Most of it would go directly to Fury, but some bits they’d sent to Stark at the first chance of secured channel. The way things were shaping up, the Avengers would need some independent leverage against US military. After some thinking on it, Natasha decided not to tell Clint about voices from beyond. After all, she wasn’t too sure herself it hadn’t been a hallucination; besides, if Coulson’s spirit was indeed lingering nearby, he would find a way to communicate with Clint directly. Maybe he already had.

 

**4\. (Tony)**

 Tony Stark was having a bad week, and that was an understatement. It started with a huge ugly fight with Rhodey – it didn’t come to blows, at least, with or without the armour, but Rhodey stormed off, muttering obscenities. Then there was a… misunderstanding with Bruce, concerning Bruce’s business and Tony’s nose; it hadn’t resulted in ‘hulking out’, but Banner’s leaving was a real possibility. To add insult to injury, it was Romanoff who prevented this. The look she gave Tony after talking with Bruce made his hand rise automatically to protect his neck.

 The three of them silently agreed not to tell Pepper anything, but two days later Tony managed to get her pissed off at him completely by himself. And not ‘12 percent of the credit’ pissed off, but ‘you left me your company but didn’t tell you were dying’ pissed off. It was provably good thing that Thor was in Asgard, and Barton and Rogers on a mission somewhere, or there definitely would have been more shouting and fighting in the Tower.

 “Well,” Tony said to a bottle of scotch, “Tony Stark doesn’t play well with others, right?” 

 Some hours (or days) later, Tony, with another full bottle in his hands, wandered in one of the TV rooms in Malibu mansion, and landed heavily on the couch. The remote, lying on the said couch, (why this TV even had a remote, by the way, when there was JARVIS in the house?) fell down from the impact, TV got turned on – and there was an episode of ‘Supernanny’ going.

 “Shit,” Tony carefully leaned down, picked up the remote and changed the channel, only to find a commercial for tasers. “Fuck.” He tried to change the channel again, but the remote somehow slipped from his fingers, the bottle did the same, and one moment later the remote was lying in the mess of shards and scotch, and there was again Supernanny on the screen. Tony sighed deeply.

 “Got it, Agent.” Then he – slowly and deliberately – stood up, and added, a little louder: “JARVIS, cold shower and sobering up lunch number 4.”

 “With pleasure, sir.”

 

**5\. (Steve)**

 Steve Rogers was sitting on a bench in the Central Park, staring unseeingly at a playground, sketchbook forgotten by his side.

 It had been more than a year since he’d woken up, and he was more or less adjusted, but every now and then he felt like fish out of the water. Despite running jokes among people ‘in the know’, it wasn’t technology that baffled him the most. After all, he’d known Dr. Erskine, he’d served in a unit equipped by Howard Stark, and fought against HYDRA soldiers, destroyed their bases – he knew first hand that, given time and talent and resources, there were no limits to technology. Sure, it was often surprising and sometimes amazing, but once the initial reaction was over, it was easy to adapt. So no, it wasn’t technology; it was people.

 Erskine asked him to stay himself, and he tried. And he could do it only if he trusted his own judgment, trusted himself to tell right from wrong, and it wasn’t easy in the 21st century. Some days it seemed that, where right and wrong were concerned, only the Ten Commandments still stood, and even there the lines had shifted. Steve felt like a dinosaur from before the Ice Age, what business did he have trying to connect with this world, this city, which he’d helped save (again), but which wasn’t his anymore? Maybe it’d be better for everyone if he just locked himself in a gym, together with his outdated morals and values, getting out only when there was a battle to fight?

A clear voice to his left startled Steve out of his round of self-pity.

“Phil! Phil, look who is here!”

Steve looked and saw a little blond boy, running from the playground, trailing  a toy shield (red, white, and blue, of course). A man in a police uniform crouched to gather the boy in his arms, and a tall brunette was looking at them with love written all over her face. Some things didn’t change, after all. And there was another voice, deep and clear:

“We still could use a little old-fashioned, Captain.”

Steve took a deep breath and answered quietly. “I hear you, sir. Sorry for the moment of weakness.”

 

**+1. (Thor)**

Back then, before departing to Asgard to bring back the Tesseract and Loki, Thor had promised to his Midgardian allies – whenever there was a threat to Earth from other realms, he would come to help. It was his duty as a warrior of Asgard, after all. As a member of Avengers, he liked to make an appearance when he could, and join in whatever activity was going on, be it a ‘movie night’ or a mission against their Midgardian foes. Like today, when six of them were again on board the SHIELD flying fortress, which was bringing them to their goal, somewhere far from the City of New York.

Thor knew he had more battle experience – both as a simple warrior and as a leader – than the other five combined, but he also knew that in most battles here his experience was of little use, especially when stealth was needed. But the Captain was a brilliant tactician for any battle, and Hawkeye was good, too, especially when he’d stopped holding back and started offering his opinion freely. Thor liked watching the two of them strategize, their knowledge and approaches supplementing each other – in a way they reminded him of Loki and himself in the days when they both had been young and carefree, and planned their first adventures. Of course, Thor didn’t share that thought with others, and if they noticed some sad wistfulness on his face, they didn’t comment.

Today’s mission would require the best of the Captain’s and the Archer's tactical abilities, and, sadly, Thor couldn’t offer any insight, for he had never encountered anything like this. Some people (Tony Stark called them ‘mad scientists’)  kidnapped and held hostage more than two dozen children, trying some evil magic on them. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill them at the sight of attack; and because of that Thor and the Man of Iron would keep behind, ready to fly the children away from that awful place or come to the aid of their comrades, if necessary. Dr. Banner would stay on the ship – while his green companion was a mighty warrior, he was never careful, and human children were so fragile… And then, once rescued, the young ones would need help to undo whatever harm had been done to them, so Dr. Banner should be ready. Right now he and Tony Stark discussed something on this matter in the opposite corner of the one where Thor stood, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed. So, even if Thor didn’t like it, he had to agree that most of the upcoming battle was falling on the shoulders of the Captain, Hawkeye and Lady Natasha. The three of them were sitting at the table in the center of the room, surrounded by transparent screens, and discussing the fifth version of the battle plan. As Thor could judge, they didn’t like it any better than the previous four.

Suddenly, there was a voice, saying: “Can I ask you for a favor, son of Odin?” The voice was inside his mind, which meant someone was talking to him from another dimension. The only ones with whom Thor had talked this way before were Allfather, Heimdall and Loki; this voice didn’t belong to either of them, but then Thor recognized it.

“It is good to hear you, Son of Coul.” To his fortune, one didn’t have to speak out loud to be heard in such conversation, so his friends were not startled. “I looked for you in Valhalla.”

“Oh, that. You know, we mortals have this annoying thing, it’s called freedom of choice.”

“I know.” Thor had been sure Phil Coulson had a place in Valhalla, for he died valiantly in battle, with a weapon in his hand. Failing to find him there hurt; not as mush as failing to protect him had, but enough to come to Heimdall for answers. ‘Freedom of choice’ was the answer he had got; but it didn’t matter now.

“I shall gladly fulfill you request, if it is in my power.”

“Please tell Clint to remember the Kalgari mission. He fails to see the similarities for some reason, and they are too focused to hear me right now. I can tamper with tech a little, but it takes time you don’t have.”

“I shall relay your message immediately, my friend.” Thor drew himself up. “And I fervently hope to hear from you again someday.”

He went to the table; his approach was noticed, and Steven looked at him, asking: “Thor?”

“I was requested to remind Hawkeye about Kalgari mission.” Thor wasn’t sure about their reaction, so he didn’t elaborate by whom.

There was silence for a moment, and then Hawkeye hit himself on the brow and exclaimed:

“Shit, I’m an idiot!” He hastily drew and wrote something on one of the screens, shoved it to Steven and Lady Natasha, and finally looked at Thor.

“Thank you for the message, Thor,” he said earnestly, then looked upward. “Thanks, Phil.”

So, it looked like it wasn’t the first time Son of Coul made his presence known. Good.

~~~

The plan was formed in ten minutes, and was executed perfectly. Children were rescued, data retrieved, bad guys killed or captured. As soon as Bruce felt confident enough to leave the kids in the care of SHIELD medical staff, the team went to have a celebratory lunch? dinner? breakfast? in this cozy Italian place. Nobody was surprised when Tony placed an order for seven, not six.


End file.
